Notes on the session on intra-DELPH-IN communication and collaboration (Kyoto, August 3, 2008. Scribe: ScottDrellishak)
Executive summary (added afterwards by EmilyBender)
All are encouraged to make more active use of the mailing lists, including `developers' for bug reports/questions, as well as actively using the wiki. (BartCramer volunteered to do general wiki-maintenance/moderation.)
- All are encouraged to send pre-submission papers to DELPH-IN members at other sites for comments. (And if someone asks you to read a paper, please reply with "yes" or "no" quickly, either answer being socially acceptable).
RebeccaDridan will make a tools section of the wiki for sharing scripts that aren't ready for distribution through the repository but possibly useful to other DELPH-IN members.
Detailed notes
- Everyone should put up their slides
- Most communication is on the mailing lists -- use them! Not much traffic recently. Helpful to hear what other people are asking.
- You can subscribe to wiki pages.
- There are many mailing lists, but not much traffic. Should they be merged?
- What was the rationale behind the different lists?
- "participants" is people we invite to DELPH-IN activities.
- Others are purpose-driven, anybody can create them as needed.
- "developers" is the one for software/grammar engineering.
- We like to use "developers" for bug reports, feature requests, etc
- Maybe we should merge "lkb" with "developers"?
- But "lkb" is one of the higher-traffic lists and includes non-DELPH-IN people, e.g. students in grammar engineering classes.
- All communication should be done through the wiki using messageboards.
StephanOepen and RebeccaDridan:
There are archives for the mailing lists: http://lists.dephi-in.net/ -- through they're not very convenient to search
- It's dangerous to have too many lists.
- "developers" sounds like you have to be actively developing.
- Everyone in the room should subscribe to "developers"
- If you get too much email, it's easy to be overwhelmed.
- But an annoucement in everyone's mailbox means everyone gets informed.
- But back to communication. How do we communicate what we're working on?
- Matrix list should be extended to general grammar questions.
- Yes, it could be recast as a "delph-in grammars" list?
- The important stuff should go on the wiki, but not *everything*.
- Check the "recent changes" page on the wiki to know what's going on.
- Alternate suggestions: Rebecca (and somebody else whose name the scribe garbled, sorry!) wanted a way for people to benefit from other peoples' expertise without formal mentoring. They suggest having a structure for sharing papers for review.
- People can say, "I'm willing to read papers (though not EVERY paper you send me)", then be sent pre-submission papers to read.
- Send them to people who are closely related, but not co-authors.
- DELPH-IN wants to increase its visibility at conferences (like at ACL this year). Paper reviews will improve paper quality.
- People can always refuse -- it's best to reply "yes" or "no" immediately.
- Students could review as well.
- Even the opinion of a reader from another sub-field is valuable.
- Maybe distributing submissions to everyone in DELPH-IN is a good idea. DELPH-IN does not have strict rules on communication.
- But be careful, sending a submission to the "participants" list means none of the the recipients can review it if they're reviewing for the conference/journal.
- Maybe by announcing the title and where it's being submitted allows recipients to recuse themselves.
- Is there any easy way to collect papers into a DELPH-IN bibliography (like Stefan Müller's HPSG bibliography)?
- Upload them to the wiki, including a .bib.
- Is this library of papers for internal or external consumption? For external purposes, maybe we only need links to institutions' publications pages.
- It's better to have it in one stable place rather than have it fly by in email.
- An up-to-date official external list on the web site would be nice.
- Unless someone is willing to volunteer to be Stefan Müller, it might be too much work for now.
- Tools: Rebecca has some tools that aren't ready for the wide world, but could easily be shared internally. If you have such tools, put them up on the wiki so other DELPH-IN people can use them. Put a link on the wiki to wherever you have it stored (you can't upload files to the wiki). There's no reason to duplicate effort!
- After you put up your tool, send an announcement to "developers".
- The criterion for whether a tool is useful to publicize is whether you've shared it with a single other person. Once you do, put it up and send it out.